PCM News: Ingwavuma KZN

20 July 2021

Ingwavuma KZN - Relief

After the recent unrest in South Africa which left 350 people dead and shops and malls looted and burned across the country, Mercy Air received over forty requesting for transport of food and supplies to the area of Ingwavuma in KZN.

The town was badly affected during the riots. The only supermarket was destroyed along with all the other smaller shops and the petrol station. Street vendors were afraid to work and even if they were brave enough, they could no longer get supplies.

You can see by the blue line in the top right corner of the map above that, compared to where we normally fly, the distance wasn't that great - 225 km in fact, and in the end the flight took less than an hour. But Kwa-Zulu Natal (KZN) had borne the brunt of the unrest, with even the provincial capital Durban struggling for food and fuel. In the end 60 pharmacies, 1400 ATM's, 300 banks as well as 1000's of other stores were destroyed.

Ingwavuma was a long way from any help and if the only road serving the town was blocked by further trouble, there would be no hope of bringing supplies in.

Interested parties were quick to act with funds being raised in Cape Town for both the food and flight costs. 900 kg of supplies were bought near to where Mercy Air is based in White River and delivered by a cheerful Pick n' Pay driver shortly after dawn.

We were soon on our way across the mountainous country of Swaziland...

.. and back across the border into northern KZN where we had been given permission to land at the Zulu King's airstrip, where we immediately began unloading.

Apart from the local communities and churches being affected, there is a hospital and the Butterfly Home, the only infant palliative care home in KZN. They were both running out of food and supplies.

The palliative care home offers care for up to six infants between the age of birth and six years.

Butterfly Home is in the process of building to enable them to offer care to another ten infants.

It was beautiful to see these precious children being so well cared for and happy!

The father of one of the little girls was the local snake bite expert, and of course she has some snakes as pets.

The day after we did the relief flight, we got this message from the care workers:

"We are all a bit on edge as we are receiving so many rumours from community members of instigators planning to start the riots again tomorrow and barricade the road. We’ve even been warned by some Zulu friends to pack bags in case. We don’t want to submit to fear, but we want to be prepared and wise when it comes to protecting our friends and family.

If push comes to shove, can we arrange for you to evacuate us by plane? I trust it won’t be necessary"

We are waiting to see what happens next.

Thank you

Paul and Cathy

Just before departure out of Ingwavuma

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A short history of us

Not long after we were married we felt that God had some full time work for us overseas. This initially began with a move to Sheffield in 1992 to work for a Christian management training company. Three years later we felt the Lord's prompting that another change was imminent and this led to a move to Africa where we helped set up a youth program with the Lesotho-Durham link in the capital Maseru. An initial three year commitment turned into four after which the youth work was handed over to the nationals.

Then, after feeling God was moving us into mission flying Paul enrolled at a flying school and completed his South African commercial license with an instrument rating in December 1999.

We moved from Lesotho to White River in South Africa in June of 2003 where we now work with Mercy Air. Mercy Air was borne out of Youth with a Mission (YWAM) and is a sister, although smaller organisation to the more well known Mercy Ships. We are situated near Nelspruit and provide a service to missions and the development/aid community in the southern African region but mainly serve Mozambique.

We operate four aircraft at present - a Quest Kodiak, a Cessna 310 and two Airbus 350 helicopters which are often used for the relief flights.

When not flying Paul is responsible for flight operations and is Mercy Air's Safety Officer.

Cathy, who is a registered Nurse and Midwife works part time at Africa School of Missions which is a bible college preparing missionaries for overseas service. She teaches in their School of Health and is part of a team which visits a number of rural clinics during the week. She is also helps with the hospitality ministry that Mercy Air runs.

Matthew spent four years at Rhodes University in Grahamstown where he studied photo journalism. He has now flown the nest and is living with his wife in Durban. They have a young daughter named Isabella.